Audrey Adams’s suicide note was written on eight index cards, weighted alongside yellow and purple flowers underneath a knife on the hood of his white Toyota. Adams shot himself as police arrived at a campsite he had set up.

“He was waiting for us to show up,” Cunningham said of the Oct. 2 death. “He just didn’t know when we were coming.”

The previous day, Adams was suspected of fatally shooting his girlfriend, 14-year-old cheerleader Tristan Dilley, who was found dead in her bedroom at her mother’s house.

In the suicide note, Adams denied that he killed Dilley.

“It states in there that he didn’t know what else to do but run, and talking to law enforcement wouldn’t do any good because we would believe what we wanted to believe,” Cunningham said. “He didn’t want to go to prison and it was better to die.”

Adams was found at the campsite with an ax, a machete, hatchets, camping knives, 32 meal rations, four cases of water, four burlap sacks, duct tape, and eight sets of handcuffs. He had begun to buy these supplies from a local Wal-Mart in the week leading up to his girlfriend’s death, which police believe might signify that the murder was premeditated.

The supplies also led investigators to wonder if Adams had planned to dismember Dilley and dump her body into a nearby deep canal.

The two had been dating in secret because of their five-year age difference.